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  • Solo Founders #6: More solos than ever, Daylight’s Rogan moment, and one step closer to a lifespan‐extension drug for dogs

Solo Founders #6: More solos than ever, Daylight’s Rogan moment, and one step closer to a lifespan‐extension drug for dogs

Author

Kieran Ryan
July 18, 2025

Hey Solo Founders,

More people than ever are starting companies solo. Carta’s 2024 data showed the share of solo founder incorporations rising, and ODF’s application data backs it up: the number of solo founders jumped 36.9% from ODF23 → ODF24 (thousands of submissions).

If you’re reading this, you’re early.

Daylight gets a 5-minute spotlight on Joe Rogan!

On Joe Rogan Experience #2349, guest Danny Jones (@KONCRETE / Host of The Danny Jones Podcast) and Joe spent a few minutes discussing Daylight — a pleasant surprise considering Daylight’s first units shipped to its earliest supporters a little over one year ago.

Danny on why he loves Daylight (from the Rogan clip):

  • Fast pen + PDF flow. Smoothly scroll, zoom, and annotate PDFs.

  • Sleep‑friendly amber display. Late‑night phone and computer blue light keeps him up; with Daylight’s amber/no‑blue light, he can actually fall asleep after using it.

  • Readable in full sun. No distracting reflections or glare since the screen uses the sun as its backlight.

  • Calm, non‑dopamine device. Built for focused work — not the addictive, attention‑hijacking pattern of screens made by big tech.

Daylight’s solo founder, Anjan Katta, was a big inspiration for the Solo community — years of work to get to a product, and now people LOVE their Daylights. Congrats to Anjan and the Daylight team!

Loyal’s STAY clinical trial is now fully enrolled with 1,300+ dogs across 72 vet clinics.

Solo Founder Spotlight - Celine Halioua (Loyal)

This milestone is huge. STAY — a double‑blinded, placebo‑controlled study — is a pivotal step toward developing what could become the first FDA‑approved lifespan‑extension drug for dogs. Loyal will track ~1,300 dogs over ~4 years, capturing millions of data points on biology, quality of life, disease, and lifespan.

This is also a win for solo founders everywhere. Every solo founder's success story expands what future solo founders believe is possible. Celine just pushed that boundary again.

Want to see what the solo path is really like? Read Celine’s reflection: faster decisions, no co‑founder drama, but it’s difficult to step away.

Congrats to Celine and the Loyal team! Give their update a quick like/retweet on X.

“The bar for early-stage enterprise sales is much higher than many founders realize.”

Blake Scholl, Founder & CEO of Boom Supersonic, shared a timely reminder that every enterprise introduction costs the referrer real social capital. So, before you ask, do your homework on the referrer and the person/company you’re asking for an intro to.

Scholl’s account of pursuing Virgin Atlantic demonstrates the level of preparation required to earn trust and land a high-stakes customer.

When I pursued Virgin…I’d read Richard Branson’s book. I’d studied the history of Virgin Atlantic. I knew what he cared about and what mattered to the airline. I showed up with a model of the Overture airplane beautifully painted in his favorite livery.

I loved our airplane model so much - it was the only one we had - that I didn’t gift it to him. Fortunately, I realized this was dumb, went back, found his EA, and got her to hand deliver it to him. Had I not, probably there would be no Virgin deal during the batch, and Boom likely would have died long ago.

As a reminder, warm introductions are the lifeblood of startups. A single introduction can change the trajectory of a business. Do your homework to ensure each one counts.

Merge: Funding experiments for ambitious solo projects

Many great things start as side projects or small experiments by individuals. Sometimes these initiatives are bottlenecked by a small amount of funding. Merge exists to help unblock smart people.

Merge saw a 114% increase in applications in Q2 2025 compared to the prior quarter. Ari’s blog post highlights the latest exceptional builders who received a grant:

  • Sean, engineering stem cells pre-transplant to optimize for specific disease treatment

  • Chloe, building an omni-directional VR treadmill

  • Abrar, retina-scanning hundreds of thousands of refugees with diabetes to enable early diagnosis of Diabetic Retinopathy

  • Rishi, making every crop on earth machine-readable

  • Andrew, creating a new generative music instrument with code

Consider applying if you’re a solo founder and this opportunity would significantly advance your goals.

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Solo, together.

— Julian, Kieran, and the SFP team